A while back I came across this great free software that will go out on the web and grab a bunch of really cool photographs, and use them to create a new Windows wallpaper for your computer which continuously changes as often as you wish. It’s pretty cool! The program is called John’s Background Switcher. Guess who created it. That’s right, it ...…

Today we’re talking about how to remove saved passwords from your web browser. You shouldn’t have Chrome or Firefox store passwords for you. It’s not safe. If anyone ever got access to your computer, they would see a full list of all your accounts and passwords – definitely not good! Use LastPass instead. But sometimes you might get a popup ask ...…

It’s great to be able to speak into your device, such as the Amazon Echo or Echo Dot to get some information. But did you know, every one of those voice commands is stored by Amazon? You might find it handy to know how to delete that history. How to VIEW your Alexa recordings: It’s easiest to do this on your computer. Go to the website alexa.am ...…

Sometimes when I’m browsing the web, I get annoyed and confused. Annoyed at websites that automatically start playing sound, and confused as to why the creator of that site thought it was a good idea. I mean seriously – websites auto-playing sound became a trend maybe 15 years ago, but users made it very clear that the practice was not acceptab ...…

There is yet another virus making the rounds on Facebook, and it’s tricking a lot of users into clicking on it and infecting their computers. Here’s what the message looks like: I’ve gotten these Facebook Messenger messages from several of my FB friends. It always has the same content – your first name, followed by “it’s you?“, along with what ...…

Scott – You’ve piqued my interest with this sentence that you sneaked into a recent podcast: “Really, sending pictures by email is a bad idea to start with, but that’s a story for another day.” How about making that day next week’s podcast? I want to know what you recommend. Photos are a problem I constantly struggle with – both sending and rec ...…

For a lot of people, the most valuable thing stored on their computer (or their phone) is the collection of photos. A lot of things can be replaced, but not the photos. In case you didn’t know, there’s a way to back up your photos that is 100% automated and completely free. You should be taking advantage of this. This is one of those things tha ...…

If you’re using Windows 10, your computer has the built-in ability to bring up a chat window so you can communicate with an actual person from Microsoft. You don’t have to go to their website, and you don’t have to pick up your phone. All too often, someone will contact me about a computer problem, and the conversation starts with that person s ...…

You probably already know you can go in to your web browser’s settings and clear ALL your cookies for every website you’ve visited. But did you know you can also go in and clear out the cookies for a specific website? You sure can. And why would you want to do that? In some cases, a website might be using an app that is not working properly and ...…

A lot of people have HEARD of “zip files” but are not really familiar with what they are specifically. Here’s how they work. Part of the confusion with this is that it’s not really obvious or clear what is meant by a folder being “zipped”. I mean, everyone knows what a zipper does, but how does that relate to computer files? It might be easier ...…

Hello Scott, My daughter got me addicted to podcasts, and I follow about 15 different ones. Yours is the one I look forward to the most. You provide a great service to a growing audience. Thank you. I have a Windows 7 desktop and it’s time for a new one. I am planning to buy a Windows 10 PC in a month or two. I am very concerned about how to ge ...…

If you use Word and sometimes put pictures and captions in your documents, you will probably find today’s tip helpful. Sometimes when you have a picture and a caption in Word, and you try to move the picture, the caption doesn’t get moved like you would expect it to. Here’s how to fix that (and thanks to reader Marloes for suggesting this as a ...…

Today’s tip comes from a question I got recently: Is there a simple way to type a single word and have it list the font name and display the word, so you have a sample of all your font styles? Thanks – Stephen Yes, Stephen, that is possible! A few years ago I did this in MS Word, the hard way. I typed out the alphabet and the numbers 0 through ...…

In my podcast a couple of weeks ago I mentioned Bitcoin just in passing, and I had some listener inquiries about it. Obviously it’s been in the news quite a bit recently, and some people are asking about what it is, how it works, and how someone can actually purchase it. So today I’ll provide on overview, and some resources you might find helpf ...…

It’s the weirdest thing – as I get older, a lot of websites have decided to make their print size smaller and more difficult to read. So rude of them! But in Chrome (and Firefox), I have the option to make the words bigger. I get this request fairly often from clients. Sometimes they think they’ve figured out how to do it themselves. But that’s ...…

For quite a while, Firefox was my default browser. I’ve been using Chrome as my default for several years now and I really like it. But the new super-fast version of Firefox might be tempting. When your Firefox gets upgraded to the new version (version 57) this is the message you’ll get on the screen from Chris Beard (CEO of Mozilla, the compan ...…

I write about scams fairly frequently on this blog. Sometimes it’s because of a new one I’ve just heard about, and I want to warn my readers to be aware of it and not get taken. In some cases, it’s because I’ve just had to deal with a client who has become the most recent victim and lost money or had their computer compromised or infected. Thos ...…

Lots of people are posting videos on Facebook these days. Videos tend to catch a little more attention than a static photo, and a LOT more attention than a simple text post. What if you want to download someone’s video from Facebook and save it to your computer? In the past it was not very easy to do that, but now there’s a really easy way. I’v ...…

It’s that time again – today we’re featuring some websites I’ve come across recently that I think you might find useful or entertaining. Fotoforensics http://fotoforensics.com/ These days, you can’t really say for sure if a photo you’re looking at is the real thing, or if it’s been “doctored” with Photoshop or some other photo editing software. ...…

Everyone knows Craigslist as “the” online classified ads site. It’s been around forever. But now there are other options so we’re not stuck with the limitations of Craigslist anymore. The site I really like is called OfferUp. You can use OfferUp from your computer (just go to offerup.com) but it’s really designed to be used from your phone. Tha ...…

Everyone knows to be careful of scammers when shopping on Craigslist (actually everyone doesn’t know that, but they should). And lots of people are aware of potential scams on eBay, since just about anyone can sign up as an eBay seller. But Amazon – now that’s a place with a great reputation for excellent customer service, so it must always be ...…

For some reason, Microsoft doesn’t want us getting in to the Control Panel on our computers. In Windows 10, they’ve created a different thing called “Settings”, but Control Panel is still there (at least for now) if you know where to find it. Here’s how to get to it easily in Windows 10. Depending on how recent your Windows 10 updates are, you ...…

Windows 10 is created and distributed by Microsoft, so it has its own agenda about what programs and settings should be the defaults and how you should use your computer. In my opinion, it’s MY computer so I want to set it the way I want to use it. This isn’t always consistent with Microsoft’s wishes but I sure hope they’ll get over it. I have ...…

So many people are worried about identity theft now. Especially with the recent problem with Equifax, where the personal information of 143 million people was hacked into. What should you do? Should you hire a company like Lifelock to protect your credit file? In my opinion, definitely not (for more than one reason, which I’ll cover). Imagine t ...…

Do you know what your laptop does when you close the lid without powering it down first? Does it shut it off, or put it to Sleep mode, or Hibernate, or maybe it does nothing at all? It’s interesting to find out what people think about this process. Some people assume that when they close the lid, it shuts off the power to the computer. For othe ...…

Recently I got a message from one of my readers, Mike – Boo. I asked a question some months back which you mentioned, but did not answer. Perhaps I can ask again? I need to limit my search results by date. For example, I want to search for mythtv. This is sort of useless and I find many old out of date results. Some info is outdated, some is fl ...…

Thanks to a really good ad blocker (Ublock Origin), I see almost no display ads on most websites. It’s wonderful. But if that’s the only ad blocker you use, you’ll still see ads on one popular website – Facebook. Here’s how you can get rid of the ads on Facebook as well. Facebook is kind of tricky about how ads are displayed. They try to make t ...…

Do you have a bunch of pictures saved on your Windows 10 computer? It’s really easy to view them in a slide show, full screen. (yes, those are my pups – Lilly and Fenway – in that picture) There are lots of ways to view the images stored on your computer. You can see them on your actual monitor, you can connect your computer to your large scree ...…

A little while back I discovered a service that doesn’t cost anything and can sometimes be useful. Now my post office sends me a picture of what the letter carrier will be putting in my mailbox later that day. I don’t know how long the US Postal Service has offered this service, but I just discovered it and I like it. My snail-mail delivery is ...…

I love Airbnb and I’ve used the service several times. But unfortunately, like with many things today, the scammers have figured out a way to trick you out of your money using the Airbnb service. Here’s how it works and how you can avoid it. I love Airbnb (use this link to get $40 off your first trip if you want to try it out) and have used it ...…

Recently a client called me in a panic, because he was in the middle of using his laptop and suddenly it shut off and now it wouldn’t boot up again. By all appearances, his laptop was just dead. Here’s how we handled it. I have to tell you, I really love using this trick. To someone that watches it happen, it’s like magic. One minute their comp ...…

Everyone seems to be in a panic about privacy these days. All the big companies want to know everything about you, and most people are reluctant to give up any more information than they really need to (with one exception – we willingly tell Facebook everything about ourselves). But when Google asks you for your phone number – you definitely sh ...…

Online scams are a huge problem, and it seems like they won’t be going away anytime soon. I recently had a client who almost got scammed and wasn’t even aware of it until I explained what happened. Laura contacted me about buying one of my refurbished laptops. Her laptop had been running really badly recently so she was considering getting a ne ...…

Had this come up with a client recently. His email inbox was constantly showing the wrong time for incoming emails. He could receive an email at 2 pm, and yet when he looked at that email, it would show that it arrived at 9 pm. In fact, he demonstrated the problem while he was here at my home office. I sent him an email, it showed up in his inb ...…

Recently, Facebook has been overrun with all kinds of warnings about hackers and viruses. I’ve gotten numerous direct Facebook messages from friends, alerting me of these problems and encouraging me to forward the same message to all of my contacts. I won’t be doing that. Here are a couple that I’ve received recently – This reminds me of the ol ...…

Chrome is great even if you just leave it alone and use it with the default settings. But I like to customize and “tweak” it a few different ways to make it even better. Basically what I’m describing here today is the process I go through when I’m setting up Chrome on a client’s computer they’ve just purchased, or on a laptop that I’ll have ava ...…

Microsoft Office is a group of programs, including Word, Excel, PowerPoint, Outlook and others. Most of the time these programs work fine, but occasionally they can misbehave. What a lot of people don’t know is that there’s a quick fix you should try before you call your computer tech for a repair. The programs in Microsoft Office are large and ...…

Windows 10 has been out for almost 2 years now. If you’re still running Windows 7 or Windows 8.1, is it time for you to upgrade? Maybe. A little background first. If you’ve been reading this blog or listening to my podcast for the past couple of years or longer, you know that I did not take kindly to Microsoft’s rollout of Windows 10 back in th ...…

Now that most people have smart phones, and we all have a high-resolution camera with us at all times, there are new ways to use them popping up all the time. What we’re talking about today is a great example of that. Who would have thought that your cell phone could actually save someone’s life – but it’s true. What we’re talking about here is ...…

Think about when your internet connection isn’t working properly. Maybe you’re getting a “Page cannot be found” error, or your computer can’t find the wifi signal, or perhaps websites are just loading reeeaaallly slowly. If you call your internet provider, what’s the first thing they’ll tell you to do? Restart your modem and router. But even be ...…

Recently I got some reports from people that something weird was happening on their Windows computer. Every so often a window would appear on the screen and then immediately disappear. It would happen so quickly there was no chance of seeing any words or error message – it would just flash on then disappear. Then I noticed it also happening on ...…

If you’re on Facebook, you’ve probably seen this happen. You suddenly get a friend request from someone you’ve already been friends with for a long time. What’s the best thing to do in this situation? First off, I want to say up front that when this happens, it is not a “hack”. I put that phrase in the title of this blog post and in the graphic ...…

I recently got this voice mail from one of my podcast listeners: “Hi, my name is Bridget and I’m calling from Oregon and I appreciate your show so much. I do love my computer, but there is one thing I just don’t understand. But first – let me admit, I am over 50 (haha). What I don’t understand is Flash. I’ve been warned to remove Flash complete ...…

After last week’s post about the website with the large volume of ads that would have normally been eliminated by my ad-blockers, I got some inquiries asking what software I use to avoid seeing any website advertisements. For me, there are 3 basic reasons to use an ad-blocker: To stop seeing all the annoying ads. Of course, this is the big reas ...…

Last Monday we talked about taking some non-essential programs out of the “auto-startup” process in order to speed up your computer. Today we’ll go over an easy way to figure out if you should actually uninstall a program from your Windows computer. You know how it is – when you go into Control Panel to the area where it lists all the programs ...…

When a Windows computer is running slowly, one of the first things I check is this: How many programs are running at the same time, both visibly and in the background? The more programs are running, the slower they all run. So let’s streamline your computer and run only those programs that are needed. This is something I see all the time, and i ...…

All of my email is sent and received using Microsoft Outlook, and there’s one feature of Outlook that I use all the time – the ability to send an email at a future date and time, rather than having it go out immediately. Why would I want to create a new email, or reply to an email, but then send it at a later time? Mainly, to avoid getting into ...…

Usually I talk about stuff that pertains specifically to computers, but I recently started using a really handy program that will work on computers, tablets and phones (PC or Mac). It’s called Simplenote. For comparison, this is “kind of” a competitor to Evernote. If you haven’t used Evernote, it’s a program for capturing information and storin ...…

I’m on Facebook quite often, and it’s not just to talk about my computer repair business here in Safety Harbor, Florida. I’m in groups with a variety of topics, including ultramarathon running, using diet to avoid preventable diseases such as cancer and heart disease, cooking with my Instant Pot, and lots of others. When someone posts a really ...…

If you found a flash drive on the ground or someplace out in public, what would you do with it? A kind-hearted person would of course want to get it back to its rightful owner. But to do that, you would need to connect it to a computer and see if anything on the drive might indicate who the owner is. But… you might want to think twice about doi ...…

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Posted on Tuesdays, Norm and Will discuss topics of interest with Adam--nothing is off-limits! Still Untitled covers everything from hot-button issues within the maker community to experiences from Adam's life to questions from the audience. Enjoy!

Computer Talk Radio is a nationally syndicated broadcast radio program on computers, technology, and your life. Benjamin Rockwell, the show host and a computer nerd, leads the team as the expert guide through the technical jungle of jargon, and the valleys of viruses, to reach the pinnacle of power of your computer problems. Additional team members Keith M. Sedor, Marty Winston, Steve Keske, and Pastor Mark, all help along the way each week with their own words of wisdom.

Software Engineering Radio is a podcast targeted at the professional software developer. The goal is to be a lasting educational resource, not a newscast. Every 10 days, a new episode is published that covers all topics software engineering. Episodes are either tutorials on a specific topic, or an interview with a well-known character from the software engineering world. All SE Radio episodes are original content — we do not record conferences or talks given in other venues. Each episode com ...

Wake-up with America's first news - Host Gordon Deal goes beyond the headlines with the day's first look at news and business news from the U.S. and around the world; bringing a lively blend of intelligent information, humor, and expert analysis to morning radio.